I am a 2007-2012 MS Access MVP Awardee

Check my blog GPG on Access. You might find recent discussions about SharePoint and Access interesting.

Published Books

In additon to Grover Park George On Access, Two of my former colleagues at Advisicon and I collaborated on a book on Access 2010 and SharePoint, MS Access in a SharePoint World.

Today's Tip

All of the tips on this page refer to Access 2002 or Access 2003.

What does it look like?

Do Not Use "Lookup Fields" in Tables

Newer versions of Access allow you to create "lookup fields" in your tables. For example, you have an sales transaction table which has a field to record the Product ID of Products sold in each order. The lookup field property allows you to create a combo box in that field which displays the product [i]name[/i].

Resist the temptation to use lookup fields. Most of the time, they are more trouble than they are worth and they can lead to number of problems, not the least of which is fostering bad table designs. Lookup tables themselves are very useful tools, but you should always store the foreign key from a lookup table in its "raw" form in the main table.

Feedback is welcome and appreciated. ghepworth@gpcdata.com